Mintz: Playing Pandemic for serious stakes

Board game could teach politicians a thing or two about stopping the spread of global panic, disease

By Evan Mintz

Updated 7:06 pm, Thursday, December 4, 2014

Ebola has struck Lagos. If the outbreak isn't contained, it could spread in a chain reaction to Khatoum, Sao Paulo or Kinshasa. A trained medic can treat the disease, but he's halfway around the globe. Will a dispatcher from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta get the medic on the right flight, or does she have her own plans? Meanwhile, a researcher in Los Angeles is working against the clock to collect information for a scientist in Mexico City. Will they discover a cure before the outbreak pushes society into a worldwide panic?

No, this isn't next week's headlines. It is a board game: Pandemic. President Barack Obama could stand to skip the links and join congressional leaders in a few rounds of the game.

First published in 2009 and designed by Matt Leacock, up to four players act as members of a disease-fighting team, drawing infection cards and placing disease cubes across maps while trying to find a cure. Pandemic feels almost prescient in its sense of panic about the seemingly unpredictable and inexplicable spread of global epidemics. What sets the game apart, however, is that the players don't compete with each other. It is a cooperative board game, and everyone around the table has to work together to protect the world. There are no winners or losers, first place or last place. Either you stop the diseases, or everyone dies.

Pretty accurate.

This necessary cooperation gives Pandemic a very different feel from, say, Monopoly or Risk. The dedicated ambition that brings success in competitive games doesn't translate well here. You can't merely focus on your own part of the board or try to pull yourself up by dragging others down. Players have to communicate their ideas, understand others' skills and develop plans in a way where everyone knows what role they need to fill.

Those skills aren't particularly abundant among today's policymakers. No surprise in that. The never-ending churn of the permanent campaign rewards candidates who are cut-throat competitors. Only the strong survive. Short-term gain takes precedence over long-term priorities. Moderates and compromisers fall by the wayside, losing in primaries or retiring out of frustration.

This isn't a particularly new phenomena. The term "permanent campaign" was coined back in 1976 by pollster Patrick Caddell while he worked on Jimmy Carter's election team. But over the years, this political reality has slowly filtered out folks who have a knack at listening and working together while rewarding those with a competitive streak. The Dan Patricks win and David Dewhursts lose. So we're stuck with politicians who run fantastic political campaigns but don't have the cooperative skills to craft policy.

Our nation's response to the Ebola outbreak is evidence enough. Obama, in permanent campaign mode, didn't want to show weakness and claimed that Ebola could never make it to the United States. Once it did, however, Republicans wasted no time trying to score their own points, promoting over-the-top quarantine policies opposed by the World Health Organization that did little to keep people safe but were effective at stoking voters' fears. Politicians have learned to look out for their own interests. Nobody is thinking about the big picture.

Our politicians aren't the only ones to blame. Voters put them in their positions, and we're more divided than ever. A study published earlier this year by the Pew Research Center found that voters are more polarized and have greater political animosity than any time in recent history.

So what should we do?

"Listen," says Matt Leacock, at least when it comes to winning at Pandemic. "In the game you do better if you listen to competing points of view. If you try to bark out orders, you shut out ideas."

But he's not so sure that the current crop of political leaders have what it takes to tackle pandemics, at least in his game.

"Politicians these days are bred to raise money, not get along, and this game requires a lot of patience and listening."

Leacock has his own style of raising money. This Saturday and Sunday, he is throwing a Global Pandemic Party, in which people around the world will raise funds for Doctors Without Borders while playing Pandemic. The goal is to raise $100,000 by Jan. 31, 2015 to help fight the spread of Ebola in West Africa. You can learn more and make a donation at PandemicParties.com.

So head down to a board game store and pick up a copy, chip in a few bucks and even work on your cooperative problem solving. And maybe send an extra copy of the game to President Obama. He could use it.